Sub menu

A young attending physician
at the CHA Everett hospital on Monday gave a peek to the entire country as to
what’s happening in the city’s local hospital, and it was shocking and
difficult news.

Dr. Erin Beaumont is an attending physician at the CHA Everett Emergency Room, and last week she kept a video diary from Monday, March 23, to Sunday, March 29, about her shifts in the ER on hospital hill. On Monday night, portions of her diary were shown on the ABC national news, and she goes through what she describes as waiting for the inevitable, to worrying about her personal safety to getting deluged with patients early on Sunday.

Dr. Erin Beaumont, an attending physician at CHA Everett, shared a video diary with ABC National news on Monday, noting that they hit a surge over the weekend and were overwhelmed with patients young and old.

“At one point this evening,
we just got overwhelmed,” she said on her video diary around 2:30 a.m. on
Sunday. “It all happened at once – ambulance after ambulance. Our Intensive
Care Units are full, our floors are full and the ER is full.”

The diary starts with her on
Tuesday afternoon getting ready to go into her shift, noting that the ICU had
been full the previous day. After that shift, she talks intimately about a
patient that is her age who had been admitted to the hospital with breathing
problems and was presumed to be positive for COVID-19.

“He is my age, a healthy
person who I admitted because I felt he was COVID-19 positive due to his
labored breathing,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking though and hard because he is
my age and young and healthy. I really hope we don’t see more and more like
this.”

That next day, she reported
he was in the ICU getting treatment.

On Thursday, things had
progressed, but the waiting game was on.

“We’re just waiting and
waiting and waiting for the inevitable increases in patients that we know is
going to happen,” she said. “It eats at you…and the prospect of this country
being open by Easter…is ridiculous and dangerous.”

On Friday, she talks about
being worried as to whether there is enough equipment for her.

“My mom asked if I had
enough PPE for myself and the answer is that I don’t know,” she said. “The
question comes about where do you draw the line between protecting yourself and
helping your patients…I do have asthma and I worry if I get sick I won’t do
well.”

Her next entry that aired
showed her overwhelmed around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, saying they had been
overwhelmed by a surge of patients.